Raju to review system of admission to IITs tomorrow

Amid a row over the percentile issue, HRD Minister M M Pallam Raju will review tomorrow the system of admission to IITs for which weightage is given to performance in board exams along with the entrance test.
The meeting would be attended by senior HRD Ministry officials and IIT Delhi director R K Shevgaonkar.
"We would hold a review meeting meeting tomorrow to figure out the shortcomings if any and streamline the process," he told reporters here today.
The percentile system, which is one of the crucial conditions for selecting the students to the IITs, would figure prominently in the meeting amid reports of discrepancies in its calculation in various boards.

Raju, however, made it clear that they have no issues with the new format of the entrance test which gives weightage to the class XII board examination after the process of normalisation of the Board results.
He said during his recent trip to Australia and New Zealand, he had received several mails from concerned students and parents and had forwarded them to the Ministry officials for examination.

CBSE chairman Vineet Joshi, who was accompanying him, was also sent back to monitor the admissions.
Ministry officials said the Andhra Pradesh government has already raised the issue even the high court there is hearing a petition challenging the admission process.

Reports suggest that close to 80 students have failed to make it to the IITs despite securing good ranks, thanks to the percentile system.
Admission to 16 IITs, under the new format, is based performance in JEE (Advanced). Students who have done well should also be among the top 20 percentile of successful candidates in class XII examination conducted by various school Boards.
Meanwhile, admissions to the IITs have come to an end with officials saying that all seats in the general category have been exhausted.